The basic job of government is to protect its citizens from threats to their health and safety.

When it comes to protecting us from the potential danger of high-risk dams, the state of Maine is not only failing miserably but is in flagrant violation of its own law.

As a story today by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting shows, the Maine Emergency Management Agency’s dam inspection program is absurdly underfunded, putting the lives and property of thousands of people at risk.

A federal report says Maine has one of the most deficient inspection programs in the country. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials says Maine’s compliance with a model inspection program was 16.7 percent in 2008, compared to a national average of 73 percent.

The state classifies 24 Maine dams as “high hazard potential,” meaning that misoperation or failure could “probably cause loss of life.”

This list does not include power-generating dams, which are inspected by the federal government.

One of the dams under state jurisdiction is at Mount Zircon in Rumford, where a 2003 report says the “water level has been lowered 15 feet in 2001 because the dam “showed signs of imminent collapse.”

In Norway, another high hazard dam at the top of Main Street holds back a 5-mile lake. The state has no record of ever inspecting that dam.

The state is, apparently, breaking its own laws by not inspecting these dams.

The state’s 2001 Dam Safety Law requires that high-hazard dams be inspected every two years and significant hazard dams every four.

Half of the high-hazard dams in the state are between two and seven years overdue for inspection, and the state has no inspection records for 25 percent of high-hazard dams.

Some have tried to correct this dangerous situation.

In 2007, after Hurricane Katrina dramatically demonstrated how neglecting known hazards can result in catastrophic death and destruction, Maine commissioned a “Homeland Security Task Force” to examine the state’s various risks.

One of the immediate dangers it recognized, according to state Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, D-Brunswick, who co-chaired the group, was the state’s dam inspection program.

It submitted legislation to establish a dam-inspection fee to fund a stepped-up inspection program.

Gerzofsky was dismayed that — when the bill got to the Legislature — it was opposed by the Maine Municipal Association, farmers who owned dams and Republicans.

The bill died amid the annual blizzard of conflicting funding demands.

Gerzofsky should re-introduce that bill, but with a new twist. Again, a sliding fee scale should be established depending upon the classification of the dam as either high or significant hazard to lives and property.

High-hazard dams should pay the higher fee.

The money should be enough to hire at least two more engineers qualified to do dam inspections.

If the state fails to fund the program, the law should require the Maine Emergency Management Agency to send an annual letter to property owners downstream of any dam that it is out of compliance.

This letter should warn the thousands of Mainers who live at risk that the state has failed to inspect a dam upon which their lives and property depends.

It should clearly point out that the state is breaking its own law by failing to fund an adequate dam-inspection program.

Perhaps that will make a difference. If not, people living near those dams will know to buy flood insurance and keep a row-boat handy.

That’s would be a sad state of affairs, but it would at least be honest.

T he opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and editorial board.

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